Ubud is indisputable center of Balinese art especially for painting with its numerous talented artists and many excellent paintings. However there are artists of talent emerge outside Ubud whose style and substance appear to develop entirely separately, not conforming to the styles that develop in Ubud. And one of these talented artists was I Gusti Made Deblog.

I Gusti Made Deblog was born in 1906 in Taensiat, Denpasar municipality. He learned the art of painting especially portrait painting at the age of thirty-one from his Chinese friend, Yap Sin Tin, who made his living by drawing portrait of his clients with contee (hardened coal) and Chinese ink on paper. Unfortunately drawing portrait was not Deblog’s best talent, hetried to sell his drawing but failed miserably.

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When I was a child, my mother, my grandmother or sometimes my father told me bedtime stories occasionally. The stories were Balinese traditional folktales with their cheeky monkey or greedy dog, arrogant king or funny attendant; which were ready to put me into sound sleep. The traditional Balinese folktales range from local tales to fables which are taken from Tantri story, transferred from older generation to the younger one every night before the young soundly asleep.

Unfortunately the process of transferring the folktales comes to a halt nowadays. Most of Balinese parents no longer tell the bedtime stories to their children, only few Balinese parents keep this practice. With the rapid spread of Television, VCD or DVD players, children get their new tales from these devices, whether they are cartoon or Hollywood movies. And the parents are quite busy with Telenovela, Chinese Kung Fu, Bollywood or Hollywood cinemas, not to mention multitude Indonesian Sinetrons broadcast from early in afternoon until late at night.

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